All undergraduate offers to study dentistry will be honoured
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- Published: Thursday, 27 August 2020 07:44
- Written by News Editor
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The Government has agreed that all students who achieved the required grades will be offered a place at their first-choice university. All offers to students will be honoured this coming year wherever possible, or if maximum capacity is reached, a deferred place will be offered. The Government has also lifted the cap on dentistry training places. But the Medical and Dental Schools Councils have warned that students will be in a uniquely difficult situation.
Statement on admissions to medical and dental schools in 2020
Students hoping to study medicine and dentistry this year are in a uniquely difficult situation. Medical and dental schools throughout the United Kingdom recognise the intense disappointment for applicants who may be unable to gain places for which they have worked so hard for many years.
The Medical and Dental Schools Councils are committed to finding just and equitable solutions to the problems arising from the cancellation of exams, the initial substitution of calculated grades and now the reliance on teacher assessments. When calculated grades were announced more applicants than usual failed to meet the grades required by their offers and this has disproportionately affected applicants from less privileged backgrounds. Nearly all medical and dental schools responded to this quickly and flexibly by accepting firm offer holders who missed their conditions by one or two grades.
Unlike the majority of university courses, medicine and dentistry have tightly restricted entry numbers, determined by Government, and these places have now largely been filled for entry in autumn 2020. Medical and dental schools will respect the further changes to the grading system announced in Wales, Northern Ireland, and England today (17 August 2020), as they have done throughout the 2020 admissions cycle. This does not mean, however, that all applicants who now meet the conditions of their offer will be able to start medical or dental school in 2020.
MSC and DSC will work with DfE and DHSC to see what funding solutions can be put in place to facilitate any additional places. Whilst some schools might be able to take a modest increase in numbers, their ability to do so will be limited by specialist facilities for subjects such as anatomy, clinical placement opportunities and numbers of dental chairs, particularly in the latter years of the course.
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